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August 24, 1989

Information of the Romanian Embassy in Budapest to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1415 hrs

A Romanian official at the Embassy in Budapest reports on the Hungarian response to Ceaușescu's 19 August 1989 appeal regarding the situation in Poland.

October 8, 1963

Minutes of Hungarian Politburo Meeting on Jamming of Western Radio

Politburo discussion of a report prepared for the Hungarian Politburo in1963 which concluded that current jamming efforts were ineffective. It provided two options for the Politburo: to maintain and redirect jamming, focusing it on RFE, or to end it entirely. Noteworthy is the assessment that the West has outstripped the Soviet bloc in terms of transmitters, and the assumption that ending jamming might be used as a bargaining chip to soften Western broadcasts.

July 25, 1989

Report of the President of Hungary Rezso Nyers and General Secretary Karoly Grosz on Talks with Gorbachev in Moscow (excerpts)

President of People’s Republic of Hungary, Rezso Nyers, and General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party, Karoly Grosz, report on their talks with Gorbachev in Moscow, 24-25 July, 1989. The excerpts contains economic reformer Nyers’ assessment of the political situation in Hungary, and first among the factors that "can defeat the party," he lists "the past, if we let ourselves [be] smeared with it." The memory of the revolution of 1956 and its bloody repression by the Soviets was Banquo’s ghost, destroying the legitimacy of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party, just as 1968 in Prague and 1981’s martial law in Poland and all the other Communist "blank spots" of history came back in 1989 to crumble Communist ideology. For their part, the Communist reformers (including Gorbachev) did not quite know how to respond as events accelerated in 1989, except not to repeat 1956.

December 8, 1980

Report to the Politburo by the Department of International relations of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party

Report to the Politburo by the Department of International relations of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party regarding the meeting between leaders of Warsaw Pact countries on the subject of dissention in Poland

November 4, 1956

Stenographic record of a 4 November 1956 meeting of Party activists

Khrushchev describes the events of the counterrevolution in Hungary and the crisis in Poland. He recounts the CPSU's consultations with other communist parties in the socialist camp to determine their attitude toward Soviet intervention, particularly in Hungary. Leaders from China, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia agreed with the Soviet position, but Polish leaders opposed the presence of Soviet troops in Hungary. Khrushchev reports that following these meetings, the CPSU CC Presidium decided to prepare for an attack on the counterrevolutionary forces in Hungary. He then reads aloud an open letter which declares the Hungarian Revolutionary Workers and Peasants Government. He gives details about the suppression of the counterrevolution by Soviet armed forces and the positive reaction of the socialist countries. He states that the lessons of the counterrevolution are to improve relations with the fraternal parties and the socialist countries and to treat them with respect; to improve political work among students and the masses so that they are not mislead by counterrevolutionaries; and to strengthen the Soviet Army.